A former IRA prisoner has launched a withering attack on Gerry Adams after the Sinn Fein president derided the Boston College interviews with Troubles-era paramilitaries as "bogus, shoddy and self-serving".

A former IRA prisoner has launched a withering attack on Gerry Adams after the Sinn Fein president derided the Boston College interviews with Troubles-era paramilitaries as "bogus, shoddy and self-serving".

Mr Adams said he would be willing to speak to the PSNI about the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville.

However Anthony McIntyre, a republican-turned-journalist, hit back at Mr Adams. He said Mr Adams' "disavowal of his central role in the direction of the IRA campaign is lacking in anything that would remotely resemble intellectual merit or honesty".

He added: "Mr Adams' concern for the McConville family is equally as fraudulent, as demonstrated by the shoddy falsehood he foisted on family members with his claim to them that he was in prison at the time of the disappearance of Jean McConville.

"The truth that the family of Jean McConville deserve to have is a truth that would herald the end of Mr Adams' political career. This is why he has done everything in his power to prevent it emerging."

Mr Adams has again denied any involvement in any part of the McConville murder.

Speaking after veteran republican Ivor Bell appeared in Belfast Magistrates Court on Saturday charged in connection with the murder, Mrs McConville's daughter Helen McKendry said her family want to see Mr Adams in court.

"There wasn't just one person involved in my mother's murder. There were quite a few," she said.

"There are people out there still alive today who know what happened."

Mr Adams responded yesterday by saying he had instructed his solicitor to contact the PSNI to see if it wished to speak to him over the matter.

"What happened to Jean McConville was a terrible injustice," he said.

"I was not involved in any part of it. If the PSNI wish to talk to me on this matter I am available to meet them."

Mr Adams slammed the Boston College Oral history project as an "entirely bogus, shoddy and self-serving effort by those involved".

"Some of the individuals interviewed have gone to great lengths to attack the republican struggle, the peace process and the political process through lies, distortions and personal attacks," he said. "The Boston project is not a genuine oral history project."

BACKGROUND

Widowed mother-of-10 Jean McConville was abducted, interrogated and murdered by the IRA in 1972. She was falsely accused of passing information to the security forces from her west Belfast flat. Mrs McConville's remains were buried secretly on a beach in Co Louth. She was not found for 30 years until a member of the public discovered her remains in 2003.